Bans on Same Sex Marriages Pass in California and Florida

Bans on same-sex marriage have been voted into state constitutions in California and Florida, with results in from 95 percent of polling stations. Same sex marriage was already illegal in Florida before the measure, but in California, the legal status of some 18,000 couples hang in the balance. From San Francisco, Puck Lo has the story.

Fireworks lit the sky and car horns blared last night in San Francisco's historically gay Castro district. But revelers dancing in the street celebrating Obama's victory quickly sobered when faced with the approval of a measure that would ban same-sex marriages once again.

If some people can get married and other people can't, I think that's wrong...

Zaira Palma is one queer San Francisco resident. She says that as long as queers still face homophobia in society, civil rights like marriage are crucial.

"If somebody is sick in the hospital and they want so-and-so to come visit them, whether they're married or not, that should be a right that's afforded to everybody..."

Walking down Castro St this morning, resident Cindy Miller says she's holding her breath.

"I'm extremely nervous and I'm...surprised, I guess..."
She and her partner of eleven years are one couple out of 18 -thousand who are waiting to find out what the gay marriage ban means for them.

"Yeah, I have a partner – of eleven years...a woman. So it affects us very directly... I think we'll have to move to pushing some kind of federal protection. I don't know what else we can do because other states will probably follow if this passes in California...I think we're going to have to look to the federal government to help us out and at least bring clarity to the fact that civil unions should be protected."

Longtime activist and San Francisco resident, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, says that the key to moving forward is rolling back what he says are the religious fundamentalists who funded and pushed the measure.

"The money poured in from the Mormons, a lot of money poured in from out of state...from religious groups out of state. And it played with the followers of those religious denominations. And they went to the polls and voted accordingly."

The issue of same sex unions will likely appear on the ballots again, activists and politicians agree.

From the Castro in San Francisco, this is Puck Lo, for Free Speech Radio News.